


all the broken happy ever afters

by Rachaelizame



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, F/M, Finn Skywalker, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-12-23 15:56:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11993055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rachaelizame/pseuds/Rachaelizame
Summary: They really hadn't touched the device. Really! But something about their proximity to it must have set it off, because all of sudden, Rey and Finn were standing in the ruins decades before they were born. Alone. And three years old.





	all the broken happy ever afters

**Author's Note:**

> Slow to update as I am working on another fic at the moment I am more committed to. But I wanted to get this up and the muse hit, so...

Rey didn't touch it, she swears! Finn would beg to differ, but then he didn't have a clear view of Rey during the moment in question.

They'd been exploring an old temple with Master Luke when they'd come across the artifact. It had been glowing, both literally and in the Force, and Rey and Finn had moved closer to examine it. Luke had warned them not to get too close, but either it was too late or something else had gone wrong, because here they were, standing in the ruins. Alone. And three years old.

-

They're found the next day by scavengers, which is good, because they have no memories of their adult lives and no sense of what is happening. Finn does better than Rey, having already been ripped away from everything he knew once. Rey keeps screaming for her parents, but they don't come.

It's a week later when the Jedi come. They felt the disturbance in the Force and the bright light of two new Force sensitive coming into the galaxy. They are quite surprised to see that the two in question are toddlers, not newborns.

They had only come to investigate the disturbance, but they return with two toddlers in tow.

The first moment they meet them, they ask their names.

“Rey.” The little girl sniffles, latching onto the boy at her side.

“Finn.” The child doesn't know where the name came from. The nannies who raised him only called him FN-2187. Yet somehow it feels right.

The Jedi christen them the last names Arama and Theron, two of the last names commonly given to children abandoned for their Force abilities.

And so, Rey Arama and a Finn Theron are taken to be trained.

-

“Finn! Finn!” Rey Arama whispers through the boards separating the boys and girls side of the crèche. Finn Theron groans. So much for sleep.

“What?”

“Help me memorize this history lesson!” She hisses.

“No,” Finn rolls over on his side. Rey groans.

“Please! I help you with Basic class! And with your katas!” Finn opens one eye. This is true.

“Fine! But only for a few minutes. We don't want Master Mia to catch us!”

“Thank you!”

-

Rey Arama does not scream in delight as she turns from Knight Nikan. That would be unsuitable for a Jedi. Instead she calmly walks away and only jumps up and down when she reaches the apartment shared by Finn and Master Arian.

Master Arian is a crèche master, and they rarely take on Padawans, but as always, someone must watch the children. And when Master Mia had noted the ease with which Finn took to caring for the younger crèche members, she recommended him for crèche duty.

Finn liked working with the younglings. It took his mind off the ever more terrifying memories he was developing. Memories, because they were that. Not Force visions like he and Rey had thought originally. They were too real- too detailed- too long. Every year. He dreaded his birthday, or rather, the anniversary of the day he and Rey had been found. At that point, all the memories of a year were dumped into his head. Rey's as well.

Rey had been becoming increasingly distant as she grew. Finn knew it was because of those memories. She was alone in them. Alone in the desert with no one to help her. And it was starting to affect the sunny-dispositioned girl. She was still there, still buried within Rey, but she was going deeper every year. Finn worried she wouldn't come out.

Finn knew his own trauma was affecting him as well. He was changing, in ways the Masters didn't understand. Mace Windu was looking curiously at Finn evermore, seeming to know something was off about him.

Rey was also getting strange looks, the habits of living alone in a desert making her stand out among the crowd.

They'd gone to various masters about the memories when they first were old enough to understand this wasn't normal, finally getting all the way to Master Yoda, who had not bothered to go through their minds, simply sitting with them in meditation and then saying that they were simply experiencing visions.

Rey and Finn didn't protest the Grand Master’s conviction- out loud.

Rey shook her head out of her reverie as she opened the door to Finn’s room. She'd long been granted access to the apartment.

Finn was lying on his bed, studying when Rey jumped up next to him.

“Finn!” She giggled. “Guess what?”

“What?”

“Master Nikan picked me! He's going to train me!” Finn closed his book and grinned at Rey.

“I told you! I knew he liked you after seeing you spar the other day!” Rey took to sparring like a natural, switching between various forms easily and usually managing to defeat her opponents. The only one who could keep up with her was Finn, and though he didn't always manage, he had his own strengths.

Finn was a good healer, able to calm and soothe a wound easily. He was also just more naturally attuned to the Force, very strong without much effort. Rey had to work a little harder.

Finn had been considered quite a catch, with his well controlled (suppressed) emotions and his natural talent. He'd caught quite a few eyes over the years, but he had clung to working with the children, and so accepted Master Arian’s offer when it was first handed out.

Rey had been less popular, with her struggles to control her temper at times, but she was a child of the desert, and she knew when to keep her head.

“We’re Padawans, Finn!” Rey whispered, voice lowered to a hush as if she still didn't quite believe it.

“I know! I told you you'd get picked by someone!” Rey had feared being sent away when no one accepted her, a trauma born of living alone and losing her family.

“I know. You're right, as usual.” Rey grinned.

-

Finn flopped down on Rey’s bed after a long and arduous kata practice.

“I don't see why I even have to learn this. I'm going to be staying at the Temple and no one attacks the Temple.” Rey stilled.

“Don't you remember?” Finn sat up suddenly as a memory came back to him. Visiting Coruscant with the other troopers. The burnt out building, and the terrible pain he'd felt radiating from it.

“I forgot?” He whispered. “How could I forget?”

“Must have been like, blocking out the pain, or something?” Rey said. The truth was, they sometimes were able to forget their past lives, or rather, future lives. It was easier to pretend to just be normal Padawans when everything around them seemed so solid.

“Must be.” Finn agreed at last. A determined look came over his face.

“I'm going back to practice more.”

-

Finn was Knighted at the age of nineteen, young but accepted, especially for a man who was planning to stay at the Temple. Rey followed a year later. She'd stopped receiving memories at eighteen, and feared the worst for her future self. But she was glad to be done with it all.

It was a year after that when the Clone Wars began.

Rey was sent out to fight early on. Her skill with a lightsaber was strong enough that no one doubted her ability. (Rey still sometimes lamented the loss of her staff, but no Jedi in this time carried a two bladed lightsaber.)

Finn was assigned troopers a full year and a half into the campaign. Originally, he was supposed to stay at the Temple, but when more and more Jedi were needed in the front lines, he volunteered. He'd shuddered the first time he'd sent the clones in armor, but a Finn was always the type to do what needed to be done.

When they were twenty three they woke to a something different. Finn found he suddenly had two years worth of memories in his head, which was even more of a punch in the gut than waking up with one. And Rey received another year of memories, her nineteenth.

They were luckily often assigned to the same missions, and this was one such case. They'd run to each other, babbling when they met up, in much the same way they now remembered doing after their escape in the Millennium Falcon.

“Han!” Finn said in a mournful tone, making Rey’s face drop into a frown.

“And Luke!” She tried to cheer him up. But that only reminded him of their months of training under Luke, and the horrible history lessons they had received.

“Anakin Skywalker is going to betray us.” Finn said, desperate to be saying something else.

“Skywalker.” Rey said, mouth fumbling around the words. The memories were still all a jumble, and they didn't tend to remember things in the right order until they'd lived with them for a few days. “Skywalker. There's something… important about that.”

“Well yes. The first one betrayed us and the second trained us.” Finn was confused, when Rey’s eyes flew open as she made the connection.

“No, Finn! It's more than that! Remember Luke being so distant around you at first? Remember his vision!” Finn reached into his memories, rummaging around for the connection Rey had made. That did seem familiar now that he'd thought it…

“Finn! Luke Skywalker is your dad!” Finn made the connection just as she said the words. Only his memory was grimmer.

“And Anakin, the man who betrayed us all, is my grandfather.”


End file.
